In this episode of “Fighting With my Friends” I tell R.A. I am sick of everyone saying popular music is just white people ripping off blacks.

Black people did invent rap but whites didn’t steal it or take it over. They helped it explode all over the world. They worked their asses off helping black rappers get their music to their fans. Same with Bob Marley. If it wasn’t for Chris Blackwell, nobody would have heard of him.

Rock and Roll is more complicated because it comes from a racist time. However, I ain’t buying that it was an all-black music white people stole. It was a dual effort. The white trash Irish brought their rage and guitars and matched it with the rhythm and sad songs of the post slavery blacks. The end result was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that combined the best of both.

Of course, black musicians were treated worse than white ones. That was the reality of the day in every industry back then. We still heard tons more black musicians than would be proportionally represented in the population. Blacks were 10% of the population back in the 1960s but they represented way more than 10% of the popular music at the time. Look at Motown.

I ain’t buying that Elvis Presley stole black music. “Jailhouse Rock” does not sound black to me. It’s a rock and roll song. I’m not buying it with Led Zeppelin either. They made it their own. Now, with Iggy Azalea and her weird blackface vocals, it gets harder to argue my point. What about the Beastie Boys? What about R.A.? Is stealing music even possible? That’s what we get into at the end.

Chris Shaw (above) is the dude I was talking about. As far as I’m concerned he is the reason It Takes A Nation of Millions… is so good. He engineered and mixed it but those guys always deserve more credit for the music than they get.

Here’s the article I was talking about on “Science.com” that shows Egyptians are white. Sorry rap. You’re “Kings and Queens” were not black.

R.A. has updated the argument and now I’m confused again. I gotta do more research on this.

Speaking of Blackface: I listened to the podcast thinking RA was a genuine “brother” himself (sure as hell sounded like it). Now that I’m seeing the video…what the hell is he? Puerto Rican? Is he Egyptian (Hence his offense at the kings of Egypt talk)?

If he isn’t black – he sure has the whole cadence down pat. And no wonder he defended Iggy Azalea’s “black talk” – the guy is doing it himself.

I find it tremendously ironic that a white guy that makes essentially black music is so deeply committed to the notion that the white devil has “stolen” black music. Has he no shame? I guess that explains why he’s so steeped in white guilt.

I think your point that Rock and Roll was a collaboration between blacks and whites is spot on, but it was interesting to hear RA constantly try to interject “you won’t even give blacks credit [for rock and roll]?” yet he clearly won’t give whites credit for their part. So lemme get this straight, the INSTANT black hands touch something it becomes 100% black owned? And the INSTANT white devils get involved they’re nothing but thieving bastards there to engage in cultural appropriation for profit with no legitimate claim to their artistic contributions?

So again, now is RA not a thieving cultural appropriator?

And this nonsense about “cultural appropriation” … so lemme get this one straight too. If I as a white dude take an interest in (or for that matter even create) any non-white art-form I’m an “evil cultural appropriator” and thus a racist, but If I DON’T like (or even actively dislike) a non-white art-form I’m a xenophobic racist? And God forbid I try to share a white art-form with non-whites as that would make me a “cultural imperialist” racist.

Ancient Egypt have Greek, Roman, and Nubian roots. the last people of Egypt were black but the people that we think of when we think of ancient Egypt were probably like the people that are there now,Arab. The people that were purchased by the Portuguese and sold in the america’s were from a different part of Africa zero of them had any relation to Egypt being that it would of been geographically impossible since they were from west Africa and probably slaves before they even got here, and enslaved by other blacks. I even think that the idea sold to most blacks in this country that they were originally muslim is bullshit. If you look at the rest of the blacks in the americas they practiced voodoo or santaria not islam. Black history has been rewritten by blacks themselves so much that it must make real historians cringe to hear some of these so called scholars speak and not be able to speak up in fear of being called racist.